


White Azaleas

by orphan_account



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Flowers, Language of Flowers, M/M, Oneshot, royalty!au, will is a village doctor person and nico is the broody prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 13:58:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10900776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It was the fourteenth spring that the prince had lived to watch the little white buds emerge, upside down teardrops stemming from tangled branches. He was staring absentmindedly out of his bedroom window when the sunshine boy first appeared. The boy arrived shrouded in the mist of early spring and framed in gold by the rising sun. The dawn made a halo out of his fair hair and illuminated his radiantly smiling face. Something about the smile made the prince, also known by his given name of Nico, want to smile back. That thought made his customary scowl deepen.





	White Azaleas

**Author's Note:**

> re uploaded as a oneshot.
> 
> I cringe at myself a lot.
> 
> Enjoy.

White azalea plants grew in abundance among the tall grass and scattered low trees of the palace grounds. The bushes lay in clusters, gathering more numerously wherever there was partial shade, whether it be from the gnarled, wide magnolia, or the ruins of an old stone garden wall. They bloomed each year as the snow thawed and ran down the gentle incline of a sprawling lawn to gave rise to fresh chutes of emerald grass.

 

It was the fourteenth spring that the prince had lived to watch the little white buds emerge, upside down teardrops stemming from tangled branches. He was staring absentmindedly out of his bedroom window when the sunshine boy first appeared. The boy arrived shrouded in the mist of early spring and framed in gold by the rising sun. The dawn made a halo out of his fair hair and illuminated his radiantly smiling face. Something about the smile made the prince, also known by his given name of Nico, want to smile back. That thought made his customary scowl deepen.

 

Regardless, the boy left as he came, leaving Nico mildly mystified. He had never seen such a bright smile before in his life, nor had he ever seen someone so effortlessly blithe. Such a bright smile would haunt his tedious life until he saw it again.

 

+

 

Nico did (of course he did) see that smile again. Sunshine boy returned about a week later, just as the pale flowers were first exploding into bloom. His smile was the same, infectious and scintillating kindred to the sun on a midsummer’s day, albeit his grin turned from simply bright to softly mischievous as he gently tugged at a single flower until it broke from its bush with a snap. 

 

Nico really could not have cared less about the flowers. They were so numerous that they couldn’t hold much value, and they were, in no way, particularly breathtakingly beautiful. Still, he felt faintly bothered by such a blatant display of cavalier disrespect. Because really, who in their proper mind goes around smiling like  _ un idiota _ all the time and stealing flowers from the grounds of the royal palace.

 

Nonetheless, he was too (infuriatingly) caught up in sunshine boy’s dumb simper of a smile to  _ do  _ anything but stare as the blond ran off holding a bouquet of flowers in his hands.

 

And whenever did he even decide to call the flower thief “sunshine boy,” anyway?

 

+

 

Admiring (and having some unaddressed antipathy for) someone and meeting them face to face and eyes to eyes are vastly different experiences.

 

The prince was having a venture outside the edging gloom of the palace for the first time in months. He had been coerced by his few attendants into wearing a dark hooded cloak to lessen the lasting cries of winter left in the early spring air. Heavy material billowed out and encased his small, stunted, diminutive frame. The hood hung low over his unruly dark bangs and inky dark eyes. Eyes trained at worn leather boots. So absorbed in his own mind, he nearly missed the figure crouched over an azalea bush. Said figure was draped in modest brown clothing far too thin for the chill. Nico glared daggers at the blond head of the flower thief. “Oi,” he exclaimed, his voice soft (rather than demanding) in lack of use. The blond whipped around, clutching a bundle of white flowers to his chest, his turquoise eyes wide with surprise.

 

“What are you doing?” The rhetorical question slipped past Nico’s lips, an empty threat.

 

“Picking some flowers,” the blond said nonchalantly. “What does it look like?”

 

“Why?” Nico huffed, avoiding sunshine boy’s cerulean gaze and ignoring the cheeky and uncalled for sarcasm.

 

“The doctor needs them for some poultices,” the reply came easily. Sunshine boy looked less afraid. (Probably because Nico had yet to become an especially imposing figure.)

 

Another annoyed (yet begrudgingly resigned) sound from the mouth of the prince. “What's your name, anyway?” He asked, kicking at a loose stone beneath the steel toe of his boot.

“Will, and yours?”

 

“Nico. Uh, Prince Nico.”

 

Will's eyes went a bit wide. Again. “You're the prince?”

 

“And what did you think I was?”

 

“I dunno, a vertically challenged grim reaper or something…?”

 

Cue another (increasingly irritated) sigh from Nico.

 

“So, er,  _ your highness,”  _ (Nico scoffed at this) Will said in an exaggeratedly respectful tone, “may I take these precious plants to the doctor?”

 

“Whatever. Try not to get caught. Not everyone here is a nice as I am.” The dark haired boy responded as he clutched at the fabric of his cloak.

“Because you’re simply the sweetest,” Will teased with another of his (infuriating) grins.

 

Nico looked away from Will, letting his gaze wander to the fluffy white clouds and the shadows of the evergreen forest and everything else  _ but  _ sunshine boy’s wide smile. “And stop smiling so much. That has got to hurt your face.” He adds in a mumble.

 

“Why, ‘fraid you’re gonna catch my infectiously irresistible grin?”

 

“No.” Nico lied, tailoring his voice to sound ever more vaguely repulsed then usual. (He was fairly certain he was afraid of catching the ‘infectiously irresistible’ grin. And he hated it.) “And are you always this casually rude to all royalty to meet, or am I just special?” The prince added in a deadpan.

 

“You're just special, death boy,” Will said, and flashed (yet  _ another)  _ smile as he turned on his heel and headed back to the village to deliver the flowers.

 

_ Death boy, huh?  _ Nico thought, attempting to quell the rebellious quirk of his lips. ‘Will is an idiot,’ he decided. A flower-stealing, smiling idiot who dared to talk to him like a normal human being for once. Outrageous.

 

+

 

A month later, they met again. As Will picked flowers, he teased Nico. Nico made a host of witty sarcastic remarks and frowned a fair amount. 

 

Summer approached fast, and the azaleas went into full bloom. The grounds beneath Nico’s window became a dappled patchwork of cool shadows over milky white and shamrock green. Will visited the castle more and more, picking his flowers under skies filled with stars and among the dancing flashes of fireflies at night. 

 

He visited at night to avoid attention after a close call and Nico’s subsequent insistence. 

The prince met sunshine boy on those nights that he worked by the light of faraway galaxies and the not-as-far-away moon. Half of Nico’s conscious was against these late-night encounters, however another part of him lived for every moment. 

 

While the mismatched pair did have a tendency to bicker like children (as they arguably still were), they reached reached an underlying agreement of friendship beneath the blanket of shallow spite.

 

+

 

One night, as he sat in the crisp grass and took a long, contemplative look at the stars, Nico asked Will, “why do you even need so many of these flowers?” as he twirled a long stem idly between his fingers. It was an honest and innocent question, a happenstance arguably rare from the prince.

 

If not for the darkness in the wake of the barely-there sliver of crescent moon, Nico would've seen the blush of pink over the freckles that spanned Will’s cheeks and nose. “The doctor thinks they’re very useful,” he replied after a slight pause. It was a bold faced lie, not that Nico noticed or even cared.

 

The prince made a noise of understanding and resumed his task of intent stargazing. 

 

+

  
  


As summer ended and Will’s visits began to grow fewer and farther between (just like the once abundant blossoms of white azaleas), Nico once again fell back into his habits of perusing the castle corridors looking glum and playing hide and seek with the shadows in the mounting darkness. 

 

The very first leaf of autumn fell in a zig-zag blur of muted brown. Nico watched it fall from the old maple tree that cast an imposing shadow on the dust that coated his bedroom window. He followed its path until it laid to rest amongst a clamor of wilted white flowers and found himself missing Will. Being completely alone was hard, but only having one unreliable friends who only appeared whenever there were a bunch of flowers (of all things) was probably harder. Nico cursed Will for his smiling face and increasingly ridiculous nicknames (death boy, ghost king, ect.) and decreasingly frequent visits. 

 

Unforeseen by the prince, Will found himself in the company of the prince a brief handful of times between the first leaf-fall and the first snowfall. Nico noted how the fleeting autumn light seemed to make Will shine brighter and more brilliantly than he already did. The blond, in turn noticed how Nico’s inky dark eyes were set on fire when the light caught them at an angle.

 

+

 

Three years passed in a similar manner to the first. Similar until the ephemeral moment that their relationship took a gentle pivot between the roads of platonic and foolishly romantic.

Foolish because they knew nothing about love and foolish because such things never seem to last in life. (They didn’t in that case.)

 

Regardless, a great many ‘firsts’ occurred before the inevitable ‘last.’

 

Nico  _ first _ realized he was hopelessly in cliched love with his best, first (and only) friend in the midst of a frozen winter as he took a good long stare out of the window. It was a epiphany with about a few metric tonnes of gravity, and at the time, he merely pushed it to the side and tried to forget.

Nico  _ first _ smiled, wide and gentle and full of hope, when Will first visited the next spring. “You have a nice smile,” the blond said in all sincerity, prompting an embarrassed jab in the side from Nico.

 

Will  _ first _ cried openly in front of Nico while the prince visited him in his village, worried over his prolonged absence. (Will had not shown to steal flowers and keep company for two weeks at the time.) Nico met him in the chill of a brisk spring night, frightening his friend as he arrived at his window wearing his notorious dark cloak. They sat together as Will held back the tears. Tears over the deaths of the few he was unable to help as the newly named town doctor and tears over the sudden realization of new responsibilities and already broken promises. 

 

When Will finally let the tears fall and began to messily gush to Nico, the prince simply sat and, albeit awkwardly, comforted the latter.  Before he left in the dawn, the prince placed a flustered, caste kiss on Will’s forehead before quite literally jumping out the window and running away.

 

The incident was never mentioned again.

 

+

 

The overcast, inclement, and rather dreary summer that Nico celebrated his eighteenth summer of uneventful, monotonous, and spoiled existence, he was kissed by Will’s perpetually smiling lips for the first time.

 

As they broke away, a gentle smile graced Nico’s own lips. The look wasn’t necessarily anything new to Will, but something about it felt like victory. “You’re a good kisser, death boy,” he teased with a giddy smirk.

 

“You’d better hope so,” Nico grumbled back, his fingers moved absentmindedly to his unconsciously parted mouth. 

 

“So you intend on kissing me again, huh, ghost king?”

 

Nico’s pale cheeks flushed deep red and he glared at Will. “Shut up.”

 

+

 

After that moment, they were lent another eleven months to coexist in mutual contentment. They got nearly a full year before  life caught up.

 

Unfortunately, life  _ did  _ catch up, and their courses swerved violently away from each other. 

 

Nico, at the rather ripe age of an even twenty, was imported to a neighboring kingdom on the curtails of a new alliance and an arranged-since-birth-bride package deal. He left with little protest and a lot of well masked sorrow. The night before the carriage was due to depart, he scribbled a tightly formal and austere letter addressed to one “Will,” signed 

 

Yours,

_ Death Boy _

 

+

 

Will eventually lost track of the amount of times he visited the small castle in spring to be met by nothing but memories of starry nights, juvenile humor, and overgrown bushes of useless white flowers. White flowers meaning “first love.” Will eventually learned to forget of messy kisses and eyes like cold earth and a smile like warm light in the underworld.

 

The boy with a sunshine smile and bright blue eyes never did get to say goodbye.

 

  
  



End file.
